Ramson - Cultivation And Useful Properties. Photo

2023 Author: Ava Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 07:13

Wild garlic, chenzeli, bear onion, levurda, flask, wild garlic are a discreet perennial herb that opens up in full beauty in late spring - early summer. Its light green leaves, similar to lily of the valley, are prized for their pleasant garlic taste and beneficial properties that not only strengthen, but also heal the body.

Wild garlic can be found most often in shady deciduous and deciduous-spruce forests, in beams, lowlands - where it is humid enough. The area of its growth is incredibly wide. Austria, Great Britain, Georgia, Spain, Netherlands, Slovakia, France … Wherever it grows!

Today, there are two types of this amazing plant: Allium ursinum - Bear onion (found in the Caucasus in our country) and Allium victorialis - Victory onion (distributed mainly in the Far East and Siberia).

In many countries, wild garlic is protected and included in the Red Book, for this very reason it is increasingly grown as a cultivated plant.

Useful properties and use of wild garlic

Wild garlic is appreciated primarily for its high content of nutrients. Vitamin A, B1, B2, C, PP, folic acid, niacin, iodine, fluorine, calcium, selenium, zinc - which is just not there! Due to this, it stimulates the work of the gastrointestinal tract, has a positive effect on blood composition, cleanses the skin, helps with colds, strengthens the immune system, heals the cardiovascular system, speeds up metabolism, and is characterized by pronounced bactericidal properties.

Leaves, stem and bulb are edible in wild garlic. It is used raw, in salads, as a side dish, in cooking, pickled, dried, insisted.

Plant morphology

It is not by chance that the Amaryllis wild garlic belongs to the genus Onions, subfamily Onions. It really has a small elongated bulb, about 1 cm in diameter. During flowering, it throws out an umbrella inflorescence, on a fairly long, from 15 to 50 cm triangular stem. It has linear-lanceolate, white tepals. The fruit forms a box with almost round seeds. But wild garlic has only two true leaves. Rather narrow, 3 - 5 cm wide, sharp, lanceolate, they are somewhat inferior in height to the stem. Their petiole is narrower than the base plate and is almost twice as long as it.

Plant features

Ramson is an ephemeroid. In other words, a perennial, the aerial part of which develops in spring, and dies off by the end of summer. Its tender leaves sprouted in March are the first vitamin greens. But, the older the plant becomes, the rougher its tissue, therefore, the collection of wild garlic continues only until flowering, which begins in May.

After flowering, seeds fall off the wild garlic. They will germinate only next year. If they are kept and sown in the spring, they will not sprout until the next spring season. But wild garlic reproduces in another way - vegetatively. Well-formed plants form two replacement bulbs, which can be detached and planted in the garden.

Growing wild garlic

Currently, wild garlic is becoming more and more popular as a garden culture. Today on sale, you can already find the seeds of its three varieties: Bear delicacy, Bear cub, Bear ear.

Such close names, obviously, were chosen for it due to the fact that in nature a bear likes to eat a plant.

Landing place

When determining a place for planting wild garlic, it is worth remembering that this culture loves sufficiently fertile soils, shading from direct sunlight and moisture. For this reason, it is better to place it under trees or a fence - where there is no scorching sun, there is no stagnation of water and the soil is not highly acidic.

Reproduction of wild garlic

The easiest way to propagate wild garlic is by dividing the bush. To do this, in early spring or on a cloudy summer day, it is necessary to separate part of the bulbs (necessarily with roots) from the curtain and plant them in rows at a distance of 20 - 35 cm from each other with row spacing of 30 - 45 cm.

If it is not possible to get planting material, you can grow wild garlic from seeds. For this, the acquired seed material must be stratified without fail. It consists in a fairly long, from 80 to 100 days, cooling period, and is carried out due to winter sowing. At the same time, the seeding pattern of seeds is preserved, as in vegetative propagation.

In order to make it easier to care for wild garlic seedlings, the seeds are often sown not in a permanent place, but in a box that is dropped in the garden. In the spring, the grass is removed from the garden, the soil is loosened well, filled with compost and only then planted in rows of plants.

When sowing, the seeds are not buried in the soil, but mulched with a small layer of earth.

Wild garlic care

For the first two years, the plants are only looked after: watered, loosened, fed (with any complex fertilizer once or twice a season). Since the wild garlic bulbs tend to rise from the ground by about 0.5 cm every year, starting from the second year, the garden bed is mulched with a thin layer of fallen leaves.

Pests and diseases

Pests and diseases of wild garlic are practically not scary. In rare cases, with strong waterlogging and on acidic soils, rust appears on it, and then gray rot.

Collection of wild garlic leaves

The yield of wild garlic reaches 3 kg per square meter. However, you can cut off leaves from plants only in the third year of development. At the same time, you need to know that the remote vegetative part of the current year will no longer be renewed, and therefore, it will be possible to harvest greens again in the same place only after two or three years.

Based on this, it makes sense to grow wild garlic in three beds at once, with a planting step of one year, or to collect leaves selectively.

Seed preparation

Since wild garlic is characterized by uneven ripening of seeds, you should not wait until all the capsules burst. You need to take a bowl and periodically shake off what has already ripened into it. Or put paper bags on the inflorescences and wait until the seeds fall into them themselves.

And further…

In nature, wild garlic grows in large clumps, filling vast areas. If allowed to sow seeds in the garden, over time the plant will turn into a vicious weed.